No, Brexit is not a ‘fascist coup’

The recycling of the same tired rhetoric. According to metropolitan media sophisticates, who revel in their London-centric Remainia bliss, Brexit symbolises the rise of the ‘Little Englander’. It is a provincial English enterprise driven by little more than nostalgic sentiment and jingoism.

We have had the ultra-woke identitarian MP David Lammy compare the pro-Leave ERG faction of the Conservative Party to the Nazis and those who were complicit in the enforcement of Apartheid in South Africa. For a man of black Caribbean origin to exploit the atrocities that occurred under Nazism and the racially motivated brutalisation under Apartheid in order to score cheap points over Brexit is shameful.

More recently, Julia Ward, a Labour MEP for the North West region of England, labelled Brexit a ‘fascist, right-wing coup’. This is grossly offensive as well as being deeply inaccurate. When one considers the longstanding tradition of Eurosceptic left politics, embodied by historical Labour Party figures such as Tony Benn and Peter Shore, it is clear that this shameless caricature of Brexit is a fundamental misrepresentation.

There are many figures who continue to provide compelling arguments from the left in favour of Brexit. This includes my good friend Paul Embery. This is a man who has spent two decades fighting for better pay and working conditions for our firefighters and yet he was disgracefully kicked off the national executive of the Fire Brigades Union for delivering a personal speech at the Leave Means Leave rally earlier this year.

The late Bob Crow was an absolute stalwart of the trade-union movement and about as anti-racist as it gets. Yet he, too, had serious reservations over the impact of EU freedom of movement on the wages and security of British workers – irrespective of their racial, ethnic or religious background. He felt that freedom of movement was a dream for the exploitative transnational capitalist class, a fundamental pillar of a European neoliberal project.

And we mustn’t forget that the current crop of Brexit Party MEPs includes Claire Fox. Fox – a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party – is a figure firmly positioned on the left of the conventional political spectrum. This is another inconvenient truth for those who desperately seek to depict Brexit as some sort of fascistic endeavour, as an extreme right-wing project.

To call Brexit a fascist, right-wing coup is beyond ridiculous, on two main counts.

Perhaps if the likes of Julie Ward had lived under the fascist authoritarian dictatorships of Franco and Pinochet, she would be more careful with her words. The same goes for David Lammy: if he had the misfortune of being a black man living under the Apartheid regime, he perhaps wouldn’t exploit the memory of that era as part of his campaign against Brexit. By making such outrageous comparisons, these people trivialise the experiences of those who endured untold forms of human misery and suffering in the past.

Secondly, portraying Brexit as a fascist enterprise is crude misrepresentation. It completely fails to acknowledge the fact that Britain has an established Eurosceptic left, one which has a vision of an economically social-democratic, socially cohesive, self-governing nation state. A vision of a country where the government is free from EU state-aid rules and is therefore better able to protect and support industries as it sees fit. A vision of a sovereign nation state that has greater control over its immigration system.

The real story from all of this is how the current Labour Party – packed to the rafters with metropolitan chattering-class leftists – holds its own Eurosceptic voters in such contempt. As well as the egregious language used by the likes of Lammy and Ward, the standing of ‘Remain ultra’ MEP candidates, such as the ever-pretentious Lord Adonis, very much feeds into a widespread perception that Labour has little intention of representing the views of its traditional working-class voters across the industrial north, the provincial Midlands and Leave-voting Wales.

Brexit is not a fascist, right-wing coup. Rather, it is a broad social movement which is richly diverse in terms of political ideology, ethnic background, socioeconomic status and geographical location. It is a diverse movement ultimately bonded by a collective desire for a self-governing British nation state that is free from the overreaches of supranational governance.

Quite ironically, if there has been anything which is ‘coup-like’, it is the cabal of anti-democratic metropolitan elitists who unashamedly seek to overturn the result of the referendum and block Brexit.

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a spiked columnist and a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. Follow him on twitter: @rakibehsan

Picture by: Getty Images.

To enquire about republishing spiked’s content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

Sheikh Anvakh

26th June 2019 at 12:15 am

Not one Remainiac has answered my question, worse, not one single Brexiteer pundit has asked it of them: Why do you want to be ruled by an unremovable unaccountable unelected corrupt anti-democratic hostile foreign elite rather than our removable elected sovereign parliament?

James Knight

25th June 2019 at 6:24 pm

The constant refrain of Remoaners is that “nobody voted to be poorer”. Ergo Brexit should be buried.

Would they ever apply that logic to Sadiq Khan and his plans to clobber London commuters with an additional congestion charge? Or what about the pipe dream of “zero emissions” that threatens to make us all a whole lot poorer. At least for Brexit you can say there was a clear democratic mandate, there seems little chance of a “meaningful vote” on green austerity.

Maya Russell

25th June 2019 at 6:08 pm

Mr Lammy was born in England. He is therefore English and British by birth and his origin is the U.K, not the Caribbean. His parents come from Guyana which is in South America. Therefore, his ancestral origins are from South America first and foremostly.

Neil McCaughan

25th June 2019 at 2:27 pm

The most noteworthy feature of remaintards – that dim but arrogant minority who can’t accept a democratic decision – is that they are drawn from the theatrical trade, the public sector, stoodents, meeja types and the rest. None has ever worked in the productive sector of the economy. Yet it is these people who presume to tell us how much economic damage leaving the utterly scrumptious EU will do to Britain.

It’s almost as if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

christopher barnard

25th June 2019 at 12:54 pm

When Labour next win an election I shall tell its the metropolitan chattering-class leftist membership that the result is invalid and a rerun is necessary as the party relies heavily on the votes of poorly informed, poorly educated people with no degrees.

John Dub

25th June 2019 at 3:23 pm

Not to mention significant corrupt postal votes.

gershwin gentile

25th June 2019 at 12:19 pm

Ah Lammy. The man who got in a tizz when Asian politician pointed out that Asian nonces were asian.

Who refused to apologise when he lied about the death toll of Grenfell.

Who couldn’t see the police officer that everyone else could see.

Jerry Owen

25th June 2019 at 3:07 pm

The very same Lammy that believed Henry VII succeeded Henry the VIII on Mastermind !

Puddy Cat

25th June 2019 at 11:21 am

I have encountered talk of racism in the understanding of others which to some extent has been a the fault of the process we have been through. The focus brought to bear by the EU only dealing with process and the British Government led by the EU’s agenda. People seems to conflate leaving the EU with wanting to have nothing to do with Europeans which, in my case anyway, could not be further from the truth (just back from Vienna). There may also be an element of wilfulness here, as with so much of the modern narrative. I suppose if you go to the same web sites for your confirmation and ignore the generality that could happen. I often visit Spiked!!

Mao learned a long time ago that if you give the masses easily regurgitated slogans and confine their choices you can lead nations anywhere. This may just be another stress point for democracy which we seem determined to test to destruction in an effort to prove (when compared to the universally failed communist approach) that any ism is vulnerable. Why a focus on Marxism alone and its desperate understandings? The word fascist is a gutter level ejaculation which Mao must turn in his grave in not using it as a rejoinder when having his philosophy challenged. A fascist today is not a National Socialist with dreams of taking over the world, subjugating and eliminating your opponents, putting everyone in uniform, deleting consciences and then handing out guns. Rather used to exemplify anyone who does not agree with your obvious good sense and dreary world outlook.

Neil McCaughan

25th June 2019 at 10:46 am

Anything which lacks the permission of the idiot BBC and imbecile Guardian is a fascist coup.

Try this typically feminine piece of hysteria from ole rubberlips himself, minor TV celebrity “professor” Brian Cox “We are about to see the installation of a scoundrel as PM by a small cabal of ageing xenophobic golf club bores who will crash us out of the EU causing irreparable damage to our country and it can’t be stopped. Think about that. Voters cannot stop Johnson and cannot stop no deal.” Who does this dolt think he is?

Amelia Cantor

25th June 2019 at 10:42 am

“Brexit symbolises the rise of the ‘Little Englander’. It is a provincial English enterprise driven by little more than nostalgic sentiment and jingoism.”

Excellent summary of Brexit.

“And we mustn’t forget that the current crop of Brexit Party MEPs includes Claire Fox. Fox – a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party – is a figure firmly positioned on the left of the conventional political spectrum. This is another inconvenient truth for those who desperately seek to depict Brexit as some sort of fascistic endeavour, as an extreme right-wing project.”

It’s not inconvenient in the slightest. Fox’s participation in this racist and nationalistic project is further proof that it’s rotten to the core. The Revolutionary Communist Party was a very nasty and cultish organisation, as countless voices have testified, and although Fox no doubt has her own agenda, the mere fact that she’s prepared to sail under Farage’s banner is proof that she’s abandoned whatever morals she had left.

Neil McCaughan

25th June 2019 at 11:48 am

If you keep clutching your pearls like that, you’ll break them.

Margaret Potter

28th June 2019 at 7:59 pm

No fret my daughter in law is good at re-stringing Beads 👍

Agent Smith

25th June 2019 at 9:18 am

I honstly don’t know why this article was written to be honest.

Anyone who thinks Brexit is a ‘fascist coup’ is obviously unhinged and part of a very small minority. And the number of those who take them seriously is probably even smaller.

My first reaction seeing this headline was to restrain myself from breaking out in near-hysterical giggling. A referendum result a ‘fascist coup’?

Come on! It’s completely hilarious that anyone is so stupid they’d think that. If Lammy’s IQ was much lower he’d be in a plant pot.

Stephen J

25th June 2019 at 7:30 am

I thought that rather a fascist coup, rather is is a relief from fascism.

The EU being a textbook example of the genre.

Nigel Westlake

25th June 2019 at 4:49 am

I get the impression that Remainers are the sort of people who would rather have the chance to have a small influence over the whole of Europe than have sovereign power over their own country. They are thus frightened of being in a position to make the final decision. That is the case with so many politicans everywhere these days. That is why they are always trying to take certain areas away from political control. That may work in same cases (eg setting interest rates). But in general it allows politicians to avoid important tasks whilst dealing with silly things like anti-discrimnation regulations and the like.
From what I can see the EU would never let Corbyn’s fantasists do anything like nationalise the railways. So why Labour is in favour of Remain is a great example of the true fear of many of today’s politicans that if the UK becomes sovereign they will actually have to take responsibility for their own decisions.
Go Boris!

Margaret Potter

28th June 2019 at 8:06 pm

Correct, EU rules state that no country can nationalise their industries, unless they were nationalise Before joining, so Corbyn is lying when he states he wants to remain and if PM will renationalise the railways, utilities etc.
Can’t believe it can you Remainers lying, whatever next

Manny Kent

25th June 2019 at 4:19 am

The irony is that one of the most dedicated Eurosceptics of them all was Tony Benn who sadly fell short of seeing this country sovereign again by just 2 years. It would have been fascinating to hear what a colossus of the Labour Party like Tony Benn would have said to a political nobody like David Lammy.
.
Talking of unhinged, did you hear that BBC producer Daisy Goodwin has called for the BBC to ban ‘Dad’s Army’ because (paraphrasing) it imbues a Eurosceptic spirit in people. I wonder what she feels about ‘Sharpe’, ‘Allo, Allo’, ‘Secret Army’ or Colditz. Is Tenko OK because its about the war with Japan. Is Hogan’s Heroes alright because it is about American POW’s? What next? Does she have a problem with ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’, Dunkirk and the Battle Of Britain?

Pity she does not realise that its because people like her are so patronising and ridiculous that the rest of us have stopped listening to them.

For her information I oppose the EU because a) it threatens the balance of power across the globe with all the implications that comes with it, b) it does little of worth that its 28 members could not do as individual countries and do with far less bureaucracy and cost and c) it imposes an inflexible worldview on Europe which is both impervious and demeaning to the needs, aspirations and quality of life of the peoples which it is supposed to serve.

So can I watch Dad’s Army now if I want?

Peter B

25th June 2019 at 3:08 am

Not a huge majority, but a majority of electors in favor of leaving in the 2016 election. That’s not a coup of any political ‘wing’.

Andrew Leonard

25th June 2019 at 2:38 am

From Australia, the Remainers seem to be much more interested in denigrating their opponents and misrepresenting their motives and intentions, than in continuing to argue the merits of partially handing national sovereignty to the EU super-state.

Is this a debate over what’s best for Britain, or merely a status war between socio-economic classes?

The later would imply that Brexit in October will not help heal social divisions and quell personal animosities, rather the reverse.

Makes me wonder if the class of girls & women who were/are victims of the “grooming gangs” will receive even less sympathy after October than they have over the last quarter-century.